Burns goes full blast on repeal – Coats and Fisher take nominations – N.C. Senate race heads to runoff – Obama robocalls in Hawaii
| POLITICO SNEAK PEEK — SPECIAL REPORT: Republican businessman Tim Burns is releasing a new ad in the race for the late Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha’s House sea, going full blast at Democrat Mark Critz for saying he would not vote to repeal the health care reform law. The spot repeatedly shows a clip of Critz saying, “I don’t support repeal of the bill,” while a narrator describes the law in dire terms: “A bill that drastically cuts seniors’ Medicare … and raises taxes … and leads to long waits to see a doctor … and even uses taxpayer money to pay for abortion.” The commercial closes with side by side photos of Critz and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as the narrator intones: “Now we know whose side he’s on, and it’s not ours.” Watch it here.Democrats have leaked two internal polls this week showing Critz ahead of Burns, including one published Tuesday that claimed the former Murtha aide had taken an eight-point lead. A Republican strategist dismissed those numbers, shooting back in an e-mail to Morning Score: “Mark Critz’s poll is questionable at best … Our internal polling is consistent with nearly all other public numbers, which show that this race is neck-and-neck.”
As Artur Davis loses an endorsement, Arlen Specter loses his double-digit lead and Virgil Goode picks a new party, here’s POLITICO’s Morning Score: your daily cheat sheet for the 2010 midterm elections. WEDNESDAY MORNING WINNERS: Former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats won the GOP nomination for Senate in Indiana, Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher won the Democratic Senate nomination in Ohio and North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and former state Sen. Cal Cunningham are headed to a runoff in North Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary. Among those candidates, the only one who outperformed expectations was Marshall (News and Observer headline: “Marshall’s lead defies Democratic brass.”) Coats took about 40 percent of the vote and ran only 10 points ahead of little-known state Sen. Marlin Stutzman and Fisher barely cracked 55 percent of the vote after polling showed him with a 20-point lead over underfunded opponent Jennifer Brunner. It wasn’t a strong primary night for party favorites and House incumbents down ballot, either. Even as embattled lawmakers like Indiana Republicans Dan Burton and Mark Souder held onto their seats, POLITICO’s James Hohmann reports that “North Carolina Republicans … will have three runoffs of their own in contested House primaries, including one in a district Republicans see as a prime pick-up opportunity. In the eighth district GOP primary, military veteran Tim D’Annunzio edged out Harold Johnson in a six-way race with 37 percent. Thirteen thousand more Democrats turned out in that district though. Nancy Shakir got 37 percent in her challenge from the left to Rep. Larry Kissell (D), who she was upset with for voting against health care reform. Two House Republican incumbents, Howard Coble and Patrick McHenry, both won their own primaries with a troublingly low 63 percent. … In the eighth district [Indiana] House seat being vacated by [Rep. Brad] Ellsworth, Republican establishment favorite Larry Buschon barely defeated Kristi Risk, an unknown novice.” ALSO UNDERPERFORMING: North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler, who had under 62 percent of the primary vote this morning, despite facing an unknown opponent. READING N.C. LEAVES: A Republican who knows North Carolina noted in an e-mail to Morning Score that Dem turnout was “appallingly low” — “Would this not suggest that Cunningham, Marshall and Lewis lack both organization and voter enthusiasm and is this not a microcosm of a depressed Democratic base? The numbers I’ve seen for independents are bad, too – in early voting in Davidson County (Cunningham’s home county) 53 unaffiliated voters voted D, over 700 of them voted GOP. That’s not good.” UNSOLVED MYSTERIES: As these races move to the next stage, we’re wondering: (1) What does Ken Lewis, the African-American attorney who took 17 percent of the Democratic primary vote in the North Carolina Senate race, do in the runoff? (2) Will liberal- and labor-backed third party efforts in North Carolina be emboldened by Kissell and Shuler’s weak primary totals? (3) Will any of the underperforming veterans – Dan Burton, Howard Coble – be inspired to think thoughts of retirement? (4) Will Brunner, who was clearly viable in the Ohio Senate primary, follow through on her pledge to stay on the bench and not campaign for Fisher in the general election? (5) Have we finally heard the last of Mike Sodrel, who lost a primary bid to make his fifth consecutive run at Indiana Democrat Baron Hill? GO TO THE VIDEOTAPE: Full maps and results at http://www.politico.com/2010 INCOMING — THE GENERAL BEGINS: The NRSC is dropping a web video this morning mocking Lee Fisher’s record as Ohio’s economic development director, cutting back and forth between clips of the lieutenant governor talking about job creation and (seriously) a waving, animated photo of a bare-chested Lee Fisher taken from a documentary about the 2006 campaign. As smooth mood music plays in the background, text claims there are “350,000 fewer jobs under Fisher … thousands of businesses gone.” |